


chain reaction

by pendules



Series: project 6 [1]
Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What if Chernobyl hadn't happened?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	chain reaction

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on July 22nd, 2008.

There is a battle that has been raging for centuries: the endless question of whether one is born as the person he is to be later, or one is made what he is by the events of his life. Both sides have plausible arguments, but also, discrepancies.

There is, too, another battle, similarly ancient, and intrinsically linked: Does everything happen for a reason? (And the particularly pesky companion of: Is there a God?) For one to know this, one must know the entire history of the world. And not only big occurrences, but every single moment of the lives of the lowliest beings. (Even the big events have their flaws: all recorded history is not reliable. Wars are fought. One nation conquers another. Cultures are upset, changed, eradicated (or adopted, integrated). The winner writes the history books.)

Andriy knows, it's never that black-and-white. The questions will never be answered (but they will always be asked).

For there are instances of completely similar situations, people living in these conditions, and the outcomes being shatteringly different. It's about choice. (Free will. Surely, nothing can be determined before it has happened, because God, the God people speak of, grants free will to all. A choice to all. So, he exists, but he is irrelevant. He has bearing on nothing, control over no man, in the end. Expectedly, the answers to the questions always contradict each other.) About change, or not changing, resolving firmly to hold on to who you are.

 

*

 

What really happens is:-

His earliest memories are of himself at five. (Now, he is thirty: five times six. Six times to change. Six times to refuse.) He had dreams at five—of both types, both definitions. No one knows, but the nightmares started before. (And only few know about the nightmares themselves, only those who've shared a bed with him for a period of nights. Kakà, for once, says nothing, nothing about God, or believing, or surrendering your will; Kristen was worried. People change at night, in the dark, all alone besides ( _beside_ ) you. Sheva refuses.) It's not uncommon for children to experience them. Though, they usually stop. But that's where the uncommonness starts: with Andriy, they never did. The other kind, aspiration—the first time he held a ball in his hands, the first time he felt the curvature of one under his bare feet.

 

They call it the 'Greatest Nuclear Disaster in History' and even at nine, he doesn't understand this. He's fixated, only, on the very first word.

At seven, Andriy said that he'd be the Greatest Footballer in The World, someday.

The fact of it (so unlike printed words on newspaper):

He experiences the Greatest Nuclear Disaster in History before he becomes the Greatest Footballer in The World.

But Chernobyl wasn't for Andriy Shevchenko, and Andriy Shevchenko did not become who he was because of Chernobyl.

 

Six, no, _thirty_ times to change. And every single day of them, every minute, every second. A choice is made in a fraction of one. As is a goal scored. Love found. Death spread.

 

At nine, almost a third into it, Andriy packs his things and moves; at nine, he loses something, but gains something else: an opportunity. A start. A new start. (But Andriy is still himself.)

 

Halfway into it:

He's fourteen. And he wins, wins a pair of boots that don't fit, but wins, and refuses, then, to ever _not_ win (decides to never feel like he wasn't _meant_ to).

He's fourteen when the ambition settles (the ambition that was created when he was seven and upset temporarily when he was nine), the ambition that will never go away, that establishes itself firmly, caustic, and seething, and—growing.

 

The disturbance, however, had a permanent effect. He scores his first goal in his national colours and thinks it wasn't meant for him—that he wasn't even supposed to be here.

He's twenty, and thinks his life was only meant to be half as long as this.

 

Andriy doesn't fall in love in 2003.

He learns _how_ to (begin to) love then. It's an automatic progression, like there was something there before. Of course, there wasn't. (But Sheva can see Kakà as clearly as he saw that first football at five, as clearly as he'd said at seven, "I will be the best in the world. That which I love must worship me. Must love me only." And Sheva is still seven, and Kakà is twenty-two—)

Sheva doesn't like competing with God. He never does. Never has. And it's not because it is futile but—

(It means admitting he's scared.)

 

He submits, mostly, or appears to:

Kakà says silent grace, and Andriy just sips his wine, looks at him out of the corner of his eye.

"I think. I think I had a dream about you once."

"Really?" Kakà takes a sip from his glass, lips applying just enough pressure on the cool surface to leave an imprint (removed quickly by the rush of the liquid to meet them). He drinks wine. White wine. Sheva finds it tastes too foreign to him. He prefers the red.

Red stains.

But white cleanses.

(They shouldn't even be considered the same.)

—realises.

Kakà's the white—the clean, the pure.

And he is the red—he stains.

They both mix, and he corrupts him—he turns him red too. (The red does not change, not in colour, nor composition—it is, he thinks, a sign of strength.)

He teaches him not how to sin, but to enjoy sin.

He won't forgive himself (he can forgive himself for all else—wash his hands in white wine of it, but not this).

And he knows, God won't forgive him either.

(And this is how he does his battle with him.)

And Andriy never forgives God.

 

Later, Kakà's lips seems to leave marks on his skin (cold, cold skin), and (he is the glass, the sharp and the hard, and Kakà is the wine, soft and light, flowing over him—) the taste of glass becomes one and the same with the foreign entity he'd encountered before.

(Kakà, though, Kakà tastes like he's been doing this every night for the past twenty years.)

 

On the night of the twenty-fifth of the fifth month of 2005, Kakà's awoken.

He's muttering something in his sleep, something about _boots, boots that didn't fit... and I got a shirt; it probably won't fit either..._

He wakes with a start then, as if his sudden consciousness was immediately sensed, and Kakà doesn't turn away, pretend he hasn't heard. (He's being Kakà, being brave, and Andriy, Andriy knows, knows now that in the end, the fact that he hadn't changed was a good thing, the only good thing.)

He says, as if still dreaming (—another nightmare this time—a nightmare he wouldn't have known about, cared about—he could have never had the opportunity to care about the man, the boy, he's looking at right now):

"You're still twenty and broken somewhere in there."

Tonight is not a night for fear. (Andriy's never had one, a night of fear.)

"And you're still nine."

It was a lie.

Sheva is more fragile than he is, and they both know it. Kakà doesn't hesitate now to remind (I was frightened once, twice, too). Sheva thinks, _If I didn't know you—if we had never met—what would the dreams be like? Would I dream of you (still)?_

 

"Do you love me as much as God?"

"It's because you have to ask that that you have to leave."

"I'm not leaving because of you."

"You leave because you are afraid."

"Yes."

"You always have."

"Running is in my nature."

"It is. But this isn't a dream. There isn't a point when you can just decide you've had enough."

"But there is. You have to wait for it."

 

Kakà simply doesn't know how to speak carefully; he speaks the truth, but, in reality, that is as careful as it comes. No room for misinterpretation.

"I couldn't understand. Not ever."

"I couldn't understand you either." ( _But that doesn't stop me from judging you._ )

For the first time that he can remember, Andriy is jealous.

(And not because of his sheltered upbringing, his naïvety—because it wasn't, and he's not—but his faith. And not just in God, but in people. In him.)

 

(He thinks about it sometimes, if it never happened.

But the thing is, he needed that—it wasn't meant for him, but everything happens for a reason; this part he can agree on—an external disaster to counter the internal disaster. And then something to counter the external one—

The opposite of disaster.

(Blessing?)

He does indeed have the ability to love; he just needed the opportunity.)

 

Sheva returns when he's thirty-five (five by seven), straight-backed, and triumphant, as if walking out of a war zone.

( _I am still myself. But I survived._ )

 

*

 

Alternative:-

1976 - Andriy Shevchenko is born.  
1986 - Something big happens, not to Ukraine, not to Europe, or the World, but to Andriy Shevchenko. And Andriy Shevchenko only. (This one is for him.)  
1990 - The boots fit.  
1999 - Andriy Shevchenko makes a change.  
2003 - Andriy Shevchenko doesn't fall in love.  
2006 - Andriy Shevchenko doesn't stay.

He never returns.

**Author's Note:**

> [The real story.](http://www.theguardian.com/football/2006/sep/03/newsstory.sport)


End file.
